The article examines various forms of inspection and regulation of public services. It presents a review of such mechanisms in three areas of public service provision and analyses patterns of both convergence and divergence in the regulation of different public service providers. It offers an overview of the different regimes of inspection/regulation that have emerged in school teaching, policing and medicine. The article examines in a comparative way recent developments in, first, the move from Her Majesty’s Inspector (HMI) to the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) in the inspection of schools and teachers, second, the transformation of HMI Constabulary, and third, the debates about clinical audit and the regulation of doctors. A typology of inspection regimes is developed as a possible framework for future research.